Promised Land
by Sussurous
Summary: AU EvilAeris!/Sephiroth. The Planet lied to her and Aeris has come back to make things right.
1. Chapter 1

**Promised Land**

**Dead**

The planet had lied to her.

She had been willing to sacrifice herself for the good of all and found herself in the Lifestream, her body being used as a conduit. Power that she didn't know she had was being sucked from her, draining her. How long had she been floating in shimmering green nothingness? It felt like an eternity and she could feel the vastness of time stretch out before her into forever.

"Why?" She screamed in her mind, her body twisted with pain as she fought against the Planets pull.

"It's for the good of all living things, now and forever." The Planet answered, it's voice timeless, sexless. There was no emotion or compassion for the lives it promised to save.

Then the whispers came, fervent hushed voices and she knew without knowing how that they were the voices of her ancestors and they told her the truth.

'It wont hurt if you don't struggle.'

'It will become easier in time.'

'You will come to enjoy it.'

And they filled her mind with secrets and knowledge. They were the Cetra, a millennium ago they had saved the Planet and been taken by it. Their souls had become hosts and the planet a parasite that used their strength to power itself.

Suddenly she understood everything and she felt something inside of her snap..

"I cannot stay here and be a witness to life. I'd rather pass out of existence than suffer this. You have the power of the Planet. Break free." She said, but the Cetra had been there so long that they liked their prison. They told her that they were One with the Planet and all of it's creatures. From the birth of a microscopic bacteria to the death of a towering thousand year old tree. They there for the birth of every infant, shared it's life with all its hopes and dreams and suffered its eventual death. They didn't want to be free. They had become Life."

"You are prisoners." She cried.

"We are imortal." They patiently responded.

"Help me get out then." She begged. "I will do good. I will bring Peace to humanity. No more War. No more Suffering. I will fill the Planet with Love. For you I will create the Promised Land."

Silence, as they considered her words. Aeris held her breath.

For them it was too late. They had no wish to move on, but they liked her proposal. They had always hoped to find the Promised Land.

'Let go child, and return to Life.'

Aeris breathed out with relief, tears filling her eyes as she felt the energy from every Cetra that had ever lived fill her.

The Planet tried to block her but she had the power and knowledge of the Cetra coursing through her and with single minded intent she willed herself to back.


	2. Chapter 2

**Alive...Again**

Her first breathe filled her lungs with freezing water and she sputtered and coughed and inhaled more. Lifting herself up, she clawed up to the surface taking her first breathe of air in she didn't know how long. She focused on the shore, and using her new found knowledge willed herself there. Once on dry land she found that her legs were too shaky and weak to hold her and she fell to her knees on the rocky ground. She was alone, soaking wet and shivering violently.

Aeris wrapped her arms around herself and looked around her. She had seen eternity and had come back a changed person.

She remembered everything not only her time in the Lifestream and every secret that her Cetra ancestors had told her but also every second of her life before her death. She remembered Sephiroth.

He wanted to destroy the Planet and for the first time she was sympathetic. The Planet deserved to be destroyed. It was a parasite. But she had made a promise and she had come back with the full powers of the Cetra If she destroyed the Planet or allowed it to be destroyed then her ancestors would also die and they were the greater good.

She was now a Goddess. She would change all humanity, bend it to her will and turn the Planet into the Promised Land. And Sephiroth would help her. He would be her dark angel and rule by her side. He would enforce her will in the only way that humanity could understand.

Standing up she felt the cold wind sweep over her drenched body and willed herself dry and warm. She repaired the rip in her dress where Sephiroth had impaled her and removed the last traces of her blood from the fabric. Then, satisfied, she cast her mind forward and found Sephiroth trudging through a frozen wasteland. He was raving mad, the Jenova cells like a hive of wasps in his mind.

She smiled sweetly at the internal image and then gathered herself together and sent herself to him.


	3. Chapter 3

New Beginning

She appeared from nowhere, a slight brown haired girl in a pink dress. He towered over her, silver hair blowing over imposing shoulders, metal pauldrons gleamed dully in the cold sunlight.

"Your dead." He said flatly. Mesamune already in his hand. His face was stark and cruel as he stared down at her.

"Am I?" She answered, clasping her hands behind her back. "Are you sure about that?"

He smirked at her before becoming a blur of black and silver. Seven feet of wickedly sharp steel was suddenly arcing through the air, slicing at her neck and...missing. Without pause, he reversed his stroke, slashed back and again met nothing but air.

Sephiroth scowled at her. She hadn't moved. Impossible that he could have missed.

"You can't kill me." She smiled at him sweetly.

"I will find a way."

He focused his attention to a razor sharp point and lept high into the air, his blade a solid flash of silver as he slashed downward to cleave her in half. Then stopped still and stared at her with disbelief. She was untouched.

Aeris looked up at him with wide innocent eyes and yawned.

"My turn." She said in a sing song voice and a strange look came into her eyes, a blazing fire that came from within crested and blasted forth at him. Sephiroth found himself flying fifty feet through the air, landing hard on his back and plowing another ten feet through the frozen ground.

He shot to his feet immediately and found her standing before him.

"What are you?" He sneered as he stabbed at her with the tip of Massamune, frowning when it glanced away from her as though repelled.

"I am a Cetra. The last one on the Planet." She smiled sweetly, fluttering her lashes.

Sephiroth scowled. He wanted her dead.

"I am the last Cetra." He said.

"You are a science experiment, filled with the cells of an alien corpse that you foolishly call 'Mother'."

"You lie, like they all lied. And you will join them in Hell." He said going into a fighting stance, searching her for weakness.

"I speak the truth."

"Traitor!" He screamed as he ran at her, passing through her and finding himself skidding to a halt on the opposite side of her body.

"How are you doing that!" He yelled, frustrated and infuriated.

"I told you-"

"You lie!"

"If you wont listen to reason then you'll never learn." She said and held a delicate hand out to him. He saw the spark of electricity a fraction of a second before it hit him.

Pain. Electrifying, all consuming and white hot. It filled his mind and body in waves of searing agony that increased with every beat of his heart. He gritted his teeth, refusing to scream as every nerve in his body felt like it was being ripped out and fried.

He would overcome the pain. He would rise above it. He'd suffered worse.

And then the pain was gone, leaving him twitching and shaking. He found himself on his knees, his hands gripping and tearing at his hair.

"Ready to listen to me now?"

He looked up at her from where he knelt, blood flowing down from his nose from where something had hemorrhaged inside his head.

"Fuck you." He spat a wad bloody phlegm at her, impotently furious that it arced away from her and landed in the snow at her feet.

She pointed a finger at him with wordless threat. Sephiroth narrowed his acid green eyes.

"Go ahead. Is that all you've got, 'Cetra'?"

She considered him, tilting her head to one side and sighing.

"You are no use to me dead." She said withdrawing her hand.

"I'm no use to you alive. I will never bend to your will."

"I can make you do anything I want."

He bared his teeth at her. "I was raised with torture. Pain is my friend. I will do nothing for you."

She smiled at him and Sephiroth found he couldn't move. If he could have, he would have torn her limbs from her body or died trying. He glared at her straining at his invisible bonds.

"Aren't you curious about what I want?" She said, sinking down and crawling close to him. Her small hands stroked his bare chest.

"I'm curious about the color of your blood." He said.

"Ah but you already know that." She said smiling, fingers going to her dress and undoing one button. Then another .

"What I want, Sephiroth, is Peace." Undoing a third and letting the dress fall over her shoulders so that she was kneeling before him bare breasted.

He sneered at her but his eyes were on her breasts. Fascinated he watched as she rubbed and pulled perfect pink nipples.

"Hear me out." She said lowly. Her hands moved from her chest to his thighs and stroking them. She smiled at him as she stroked up to the hardening bulge in his pants. "If you destroy the planet then you destroy yourself. I am offering you a better option."

"Peace!" He spat as though it was the filthiest word in his vocabulary. His eyes moved from her naked breasts to her hand palming his crotch and back again.

"You will be the enforcer of Peace. The planet has enslaved my people and there is no escape for them. All I can do is make their existence pleasurable. I will do that and you will help. She said unbuttoning his pants taking hold of his erection. She stroked it until hunger replaced the look of madness in his eyes.

"How?"

"First we will destroy Shinra, raze it to the ground as a message to the people of the world. Then we will set new laws. No more Mako. No more Technology. The Planet will go back to the way it was at the beginning of time, villages not cities. Animal power not mechanical power. There will be no pollution, everything will be recycled and that will be the new religion. Sephiroth, I need you to thin the herd. Anyone tries to stop us, they die. Anyone breaks the new laws, they die. Better that they go to the lifestream and be reborn to learn obedience from birth. Together we will create the Promised Land. A place of peace and beauty and plenty for everyone."

"I might be willing to go along with that." He gasped as her hand continued to caress him and the blood rushed from his brain. He didn't care so much for peace and all that other crap. But killing and enforcing he could do. He was bred for it. "Free me now."

"Promise me first."

"That I won't hurt you?" His lips spread into a fierce smile.

"No silly." She said and he glowered at her. "It's should be understood that you can't hurt me. Promise me that you will rule by my side, as my avenging angel. That you will help me bring the world to its knees."

"Yes." He said and laughed when freed him.

Immediately he grabbed her and flipped her on her back. Giving her a look of victory, he reached down and tore off her panties and spread her legs wide. Aeris gazed up at him with flushed cheeks as she wrapped them around his waist, urging him on. He pushed into her roughly until he was deep inside. She was hot and wet and tight. Her hands were tangled in his hair as she arched and writhed against him. Commanding him to fuck her. He leaned down and kissed her hard, shoving his tongue into her mouth and losing himself in her taste and smell.

He found that he liked it.

He decided that he would rule the world with her. Bring it to it's knees. He would become a God and she would be his Goddess.

Sephiroth did as she asked. He fucked her hard and fast, hearing and feeling her climax before he exploded into her with a curse and then collapsed, feeling utterly spent yet renewed. He had a new mission now. A brighter future lay ahead.

"I get to kill Shinra he said after taking a moment to catch his breathe.

"Wouldn't have it any other way." She cooed and petted his long silver hair.


	4. Chapter 4

Avalanche

24 hours later, on the Highwind

"Where is he then?" Barret grunted slamming his gun arm down on the map covered table, startling the several Avalanche members that sat around it. Vincent Valentine, who was leaning against a wall out of the way and in the shadows, didn't even flinch. Yuffie was too engrossed in the cartoon show she was watching to pay any of them any mind.

"Well he sure as fuck aint here!" Cid answered him, "I say we turn back. We must of lost him somewhere."

"The hell we are!" Barret bellowed. "That would only waste time. For all we know he's already at the Crater."

"The fuck you say! Their ain't no way he could have got past us! And no one knows for sure that he's headed there."

"Where else would he be going? What else is out here?" Barret swept his hand at the scene outside the cockpit window, at the miles and miles of tundra and snow that led nowhere but Icicle village and the Northern Crater.

"Barret's right." Tifa said. "Up until now Sephiroth has left a trail of destruction for us to follow, the Midgar Zolom and every village and town he passed he torched. He knows we're following, for some reason he wants us too... and now nothing. What could he be up to?"

"Maybe he's dead." Yuffie called out. "Maybe he did us all a favor and killed himself."

"Goddamn it!" Cid cried, while everyone else groaned. "Listen kid, go back to watching your loony tunes all right? Grownups are trying to talk here."

"Oh! Oh!" Yuffie shrieked, leaping to her feet. "Your just saying that because I'm a woman. That's sexist. Tifa tell him that's sexist!"

"Yuffie please-" Tifa started.

"Enough." Cloud cut in.

"Yuffie, Sephiroth's not dead. He just isn't." He said, giving her a stern look. "And if he is, you can tell us all 'I told you so', alright?"

Yuffie glared at Cid, then only slightly mollified and frowning, sat back down to fiddle with the small television she was watching.

"And Cid," Cloud continued. "unless we learn something definite about his whereabouts, we are not turning back or in any way changing course. We are going the Northern Crater. Sephiroth is out there, somewhere."

Cloud looked out the cockpit window, his mako enhanced eyes pensive and brooding. Everyone followed his gaze as though willing Sephiroth to appear and make himself known.

"Damn it!" Yuffie cried, smacking the side of the TV. "They just interrupted my show for a news bulletin!"

"Yuffie!" Cid warned.

"Oh Gaia! You guys, you have to see this."

"That's it!" Cid cried, totally blowing a fuse. "We don't have time for this bullshit."

"No, listen! It's Sephiroth, he's on TV!"

"What?!"

The picture was grainy, and showed live action, in real time. Even as everyone gathered round, it took a moment for what they were seeing to sink in.

Sephiroth was a blur of motion, moving too fast for the camera to capture, but the flow of his silver hair and the swing of his long sword marked him. He was cutting a path through a dense, jam packed crowd of fleeing, panicked people. When that didn't prove to be a quick enough way to decimate the crowd, he raised a hand and shot a devastating bolt of energy that blasted most of the crowd off their feet and slammed them cruelly into the walls of buildings. Then he shot fire materia at them, before leaping out of the way and out of view of the camera.

Avalanche stood stunned as a frightened looking news reporter came on. She stood before a backdrop of a city in flames, in the background people were screaming, an explosion blocked out her voice voice and made her cower down before she bravely continued on with her story.

"Thirty minutes ago, the city of Midgar fell under a devastating attack by rogue SOLDIER Sephiroth and an unnamed woman." A dated picture of Sephiroth from his Shinra days showed on the screen.

"No one knows what they want or why they are doing this." She continued. "Reports tell us that President Shinra is dead, the Shinra tower which housed the entire Midgar Military including SOLDIER, was the first to be attacked. Eyewitness tell us that the building was utterly annihilated in a blast so powerful that it leveled several city blocks. The Upper Plate was attacked soon after, dropping down onto the citizens living beneath it.

"The devastation here is absolute. There was no warning or mercy. Our hospitals, our residential areas, our schools have been attacked and destroyed. Survivors are fleeing the city on foot. To make matters worse, for reasons unknown to our experts, nearly all motorized power has been disabled. Vehicles wont run, there is no power whats so ever, except for battery power and even that only works several miles outside of Midgar, where I'm reporting from. The fire department, rescue teams and police are overwhelmed and simply trying to help as many people get out as possible."

"Oh mama." Yuffie wispered, to shocked to say anything else.

"It's like Nebelheim, all over again." Tifa said, stunned.

"We know where he is now." Cloud said shaking his head at the utter devastation that they were all witnessing it. If anything the sight of it just filled him with hatred and determination. Anger would come later, so would self incrimination about how they had let Sephiroth slip by them.

"He's a bloody demon." Cid said, and beside him Yuffie nodded vigorously.

"Who's the woman though, the one that's with him?" Tifa asked.

"A hostage?" Barret shrugged.

"Perhaps a manifestation of Jenova." Vincent said thoughtfully, intently watching everything on that tiny television screen with his blood red eyes.

"It's Aeris!" Someone gasped.

"It can't be." Someone else answered.

On the TV a young woman had materialized as though by magic. One second she wasn't there and then she was. Her hair was in wild disarray and her pink dress was torn and blackened, but Aeris's bright green eyes were as wide and innocent as everyone remembered.

The reporter shrieked at her appearance and but held her microphone in a badly shaking hand.

"Who...what...?"

"I'll take that." A gentle girlish voice answered and the reporter backed away, looking badly frightened and ready to bolt as Aeris took the microphone from her.

"People of the Planet, my name is Aeris Gainsborough and I am the very last of the Cetra." She said and every member of Avalanche stood on the cockpit of the Highwind totally speechless and disbelieving at what they were seeing.

"Perhaps you have never heard of my kind." Aeris was saying. "That's all right, for I feel that is my duty to educate you. My race, the Cetra, was nearly extinguished a millenia ago in an effort to save human kind and the Planet against an alien threat named Jenova. We beat and isolated the Virus at great expense to ourselves. Our thriving population was brought to near extinction. Nevertheless, it was felt, and the belief is still held by my ancestors that their sacrifice was worth it.

"Unfortunately, you have taken our gift and destroyed it. You have used the very lifeblood of the Planet and weakened her. Your scientists have resurrected Jenova and left unchecked, she will annihilate this planet with greater speed then even mankind can manage.

"We, the Cetra, have come to the conclusion that humans don't appreciate and value our gift, so I am taking back the Planet and I'm bringing it to a new age. An age of peace and plenty. An age where everyone will treat the planet with the respect that she is due.

"To that end we shall go back to simpler times. A time when a family had to grow it's own food, not buy ready made and tainted with poisons. When a family made its own clothing, build its own shelter, lived life the way nature intended, naturally with no harm done to the environment.

"These are exiting times filled with change and though it may be difficult at first, please understand that with change comes hope for a better future for you and your children. So I command you to leave your cities and towns, for they will soon be razed to the ground. Bring weapons for they will not work. Motorized power and electricity is against natures plan. Mako is the lifeblood of the Planet, it is not meant to be used as fuel."

"But.." The reporter stuttered. "How will people live? So many have been killed or injured and so many more will die if they're forced out into the wastelands with no food or water or shelter. How can this be a good thing? How can anybody benefit from this?"

"I sympathise." Aeris answered, her eyes fever bright. Her face peaceful. "I really do. This is not the way I wanted things to be but I had no choice. If you had a broken limb that was turning to gangrene and the infection was spreading and endangering a healthy body, then wouldn't it be better to cut off that offending limb, so that the body could continue to live. That is what I am doing here. What we need is a clean start. And so I, with the help of SOLDIER General Sephiroth will see to that."

"But how can people live in the Wastelands of Midgar? The nights out here fall down to the minus degrees and the days are scorching hot. There is no water, no food...!"

"All that will be provided for." Aeris said with a beneficial smile, her feverish eyes growing brighter. "The Cetra only want for there to be peace and plenty. Look out behind you."

The camera panned away from the Armageddon that was Midgar and swept over the desolate land that surrounded it.

"All this," Aeris continued, speaking like a mother to a small child. "used to be fruitful, it is only like this because of man-kinds abuse. It doesn't have to be like this, it never did. See now, this is what I've been promising you."

With a broad, slow sweep of her hand the landscape around them shimmered like a mirage, then everything changed from the colors of dust and dirt to every shade of green an unspoiled garden could hold. Where there had been nothing but dirt and gravel there were miles of tall waving grass. Where boulders and cliffs broke the unremitting flatness of the plain, now trees softened the horizon. In the distance the sparkle of a waterfall could be seen, where before there had only been the sheer face of a mountain side.

The reporter was stunned almost speechless. "I...How?..Where?.." Then she looked at Aeris with a stupefied, stunned look on her face. "Are you a goddess?"

Aeris smiled at her, with a peaceful look that transcended her into something almost holy.

"I am a Cetra." She said. "And I give you the Promised Land."

And with that her form shimmered into a rainbow of colors before she vanished from sight.

*****

On the cockpit of the Highwind each and every member of Avalanche was stunned speechless. What they had witnessed was impossible. It was too much to take in. The destruction of Midgar, the apparent resurrection of Aeris, who they had rightfully thought was lost to them forever and the things she had said and done. it was almost too much to take in.

"We are in sooo much trouble." Yuffie said in a hushed, awed voice. Besides her both Cid and Barret nodded mutely.

"That can't be Aeris." Tifa said. "She's dead."

"So was Serphiroth." Vincent said. "And he came back."

"But.." Said Tifa. "Even if she could have come back to life, which should be impossible...she would never cause that much destruction. Aeris, our Aeris, wouldn't even kill a fly. She'd try to catch it first then let it go outside."

"Not to mention the way she changed the wastes of Midgar. How is that even possible?"

But it was possible, unless the whole televised program was one huge, very expensive hoax what they were seeing was indeed real. The reporter was beside herself. Talking a mile a minute, making the camera pan the flames that consumed Midgar to the flowers and grasses that had miraculously appeared and that she now held in her hand.

"It isn't." Cloud said at last. "That wasn't Aerith."

"Who then?"

Everyone looked to Cloud.

"I don't know. But Aerith wouldn't kill millions of people to save them. That's madness. That's as insane as Sephiroth is. Somehow he is to blame for this."

"So if that wasn't Aeris then who was she?"

"I don't know. What's important is that we turn this ship around and stop her."

Everyone solemnly nodded. Cid immediately moved to the control deck.

"But,"Tifa said. "What if it is Aeris and Sephiroth has gotten control of her mind. Turned her bad?"

"Then we have no choice. If she is as powerful as she appears to be and is also teamed up with Sephiroth then we'll only have one shot at her. When he find her, we will have to kill her."


End file.
